He used all of his might to open both of his hands and let go of Taiga’s. He righted himself back up again after having been so shaken, and he nodded slightly, There.
It was fine this way.
He had done it, hadn’t he? Just like he imagined.
He held his breath and regathered his strength in his core. He looked down on Taiga’s white face. Taiga was looking at the hand he let go. Her delicate and beautiful face, like a French doll’s, was so perfectly composed that he couldn’t tell what emotion was on it. The midwinter wind, which cut his skin like a blade of ice, flipped Taiga’s soft bangs over. Ryuuji gently brushed away the strands of hair that stuck to her lips.
Quietly, Taiga looked up at Ryuuji, and in both her eyes, he saw quivering lights close to overflowing.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve thought of something I need to do.”
“You can’t go.”
He shook his head at Taiga’s anxious voice.
“It’s fine. I can go.”
Ryuuji took a step forward.
Taiga kept following after him. Even if he told her to go home, she wasn’t the type of person to ever listen to him.
The haberdasheries and stationery stores were, of course, already closed, but there were still residents on their way home, and the two supermarkets on the street were still open. The convenience store was spitting bright light onto the street, and the bookstores were still within operating hours. There were also several izakaya bars and a butcher shop, locally famous for its croquettes, that were open unexpectedly late.
Ryuuji’s goal, however, wasn’t the croquettes.
“So it really is closed…”
“You had something you needed to do here?”
Stopping, he stared at the closed shutters. The store name, Alps, was written in old-fashioned, cursive script on a wooden sign. It looked like a western-styled confectionary store. There was a phone number under the store name.
He pulled out his phone and tried calling it. After it rang for a while, a message ran informing him that it was outside of their business hours and then went to voicemail. He felt a little flustered on the inside as he said, “I-I’m so sorry to call in the middle of the night. Um, I’m the son of Takasu Yasuko, the person you hired to work for you part-time recently. Well, there was something I needed to tell you…ah!”
Beep. The heartless sound of the machine flowed out of the phone and the voicemail cut off. He was just about to tell them his phone number. Ryuuji hesitated for a moment over whether to call again and felt a poke at his elbow.
“What’d you go ‘Ah!’ for? Was that their voicemail? They definitely heard the ‘Ah!’ Is this where Ya-chan is working part-time?”
It happened the moment that he tried to reply to Taiga.
Clatter clatter. The shutter opened by a few centimeters. From the still-lit-up interior of the shop, a middle-aged man in a cook’s coat bent over and peeked his head out. His eyes stopped on Ryuuji and Taiga.
“Are you the one who just called our voicemail? We could hear you from inside.”
“Oh, yes, that was me. Um…my name is Takasu. I’m your employee’s son.”
Her soooon?! The man shouted with the usual reaction Ryuuji always got. The man pulled up the shutter and came out onto the street.
“I’m sorry for coming when you’re already closed. Um…it’s about my mom, but she recently got sick.”
“Huh, you mean Takasu-san? What happened? Is she okay?”
“She’s more or less fine, but—”
Taiga, who had been listening from the side lifted her eyebrows slightly. She probably knew what he was about to say.
“She started working even though she shouldn’t have for my sake, and though it’s very sudden, I have to ask that you let her go today.”
Whaaaat?! With the same expression and voice as before, the man who was probably the store owner bent over backwards. Taiga also looked at Ryuuji from the side of her eyes.
Yes, he was acting on his own. Though Yasuko had informed Bishamon Heaven that she would be taking the day off, she probably intended to go back to this job like normal the next day. Though he knew it would cause trouble for the store, and he hadn’t gotten permission from Yasuko, Ryuuji had decided to have this conversation about her resigning on his own. He was going to lie to Yasuko and tell her that the store said she didn’t need to come in anymore.
He knew this wouldn’t show her he was strong enough, but he wanted to do something to stop Yasuko from pushing herself too hard, even if it was by force. If he let her go on, Yasuko wouldn’t stop to think about what she was doing to herself physically, and he knew she would just keep increasing the amount of work she was taking on.
“Whoa, I see… That’s going to be a bit of a problem. We were really counting on her.”
“I’m sorry for causing you so much trouble.”
“We can’t do anything about her being sick, but you think she can’t come back at all? We could shorten her hours. Would that work?”
“Well, it’s a little… I’m really sorry.”
“See, the day after tomorrow is Valentine’s. We’re doing our usual hours tomorrow on top of planning to have a special sale on chocolates… What’ll I do, hmm, we only have our artisans… She’s sick, so she can’t force herself, but…hmm.”
Ryuuji shrank back apologetically.
“Could you do it?” The owner of the shop, who seemed to be in quite a bind, said something Ryuuji hadn’t expected. “You’re in high school, right? It’s fine if it’s after school. It’s fine if you only come tomorrow and the next day, too. Please, I’m begging you. We just don’t have enough hands.”
No, I’m forbidden from working—Ryuuji start to turn the man down, but swallowed his words. Didn’t he just decide that he wouldn’t do everything Yasuko said?
It wasn’t as though he was rebelling against everything she told him. He was doing for his future—it might be one step forward to changing his existence in a significant way.
In order to brush aside his hesitation, he nodded before the store owner could change his mind.
“Then I will…tomorrow and the next day.”
Taiga looked up at Ryuuji’s face like she was surprised. It was fine this way. This was how he would get Yasuko to stop working here. First, he would return everything to the status quo.
If he was honest with her, Yasuko would definitely be upset, so all he had to do was tell her there wasn’t a job for her at the store anymore. The time might come when she’d find out about Ryuuji’s part-time job, but at that moment, it was fine as long as she didn’t find out immediately after she collapsed.
“Oh, thank goodness! Thanks so much, you’re my savior!”
“It’s nothing, I’ll…”
“When can you come tomorrow?!”
The shop owner’s hand stretched out to him. Ryuuji tried to answer the handshake by stretching out his own hand in return, but his hand slipped in vain through the empty air.
“Me?!”
The store owner had brazenly grasped Taiga’s hand.
“This hasn’t got anything to do with me?!”
“Aren’t you his sister? Well, got that wrong!”
Ha ha ha ha ha, the old man’s joke echoed emptily under the cold sky. “But we just have to have a girl do the selling. We don’t have a uniform for men.”
“I can’t work! Do you have any idea how much of a klutz…if I work, the skies will part and the earth will burn…!”
“You’d just be selling chocolates in boxes, so what’s the worst that could happen?! Just tell me when you can come tomorrow!”
Um, I-I-I… Ryuuji pointed a finger at himself, but the owner’s eyes were passionately focused on Taiga. Taiga was frantically shaking her head, but she glanced up at Ryuuji’s face.
“Then…then, I’ll come with him. We’ll do it together.”
“Hey! Wait! You don’t need to…”
The store owner scratched his chin as he nodded.
“Hm, then it’s settled, but I can only pay one person. Is that fine? I wonder what I’ll do for his uniform.”
“You can do whatever. I’ll just stick around, and he’ll be the one actually working.”
Taiga stood imposingly, looking smug in Ryuuji’s down jacket as she stuck out her chest and pointed at Ryuuji. Stop, you don’t need to do that, Ryuuji tried to say, but she spoke again in a low voice, “You’re the one working. Just hanging around here isn’t a big deal for me. There’s something strange going on with you anyway. That’s why I’m going to be monitoring you. Plus, just earlier you were telling me how much of a nuisance I am and stuff. You said I couldn’t do anything. I’m going to have you take that back. Then you can bow down to my greatness and kindness and crawl along the ground worshipping me like a god.”
And just like that, they closed the deal on the two-day, secret, part-time job.